cold air in the system appears to have prevented even faster intensification and deepening and meant that many locations received 10 to 25 inches of wet, heavy snow, which would have fluffed out to 40 to 55 or more inches of fluffy snow at . In spite of this, the largest snow drifts created by the storm in the Midwest were some in Iowa which approached in height. In some localities, the moisture content of the precipitation from the storm exceeded . This was probably part of the reason that the section of the snowpack generated by this storm persisted into late April 2010 in some locations. Lightning, thunder, rain, granular snow, ice pellets, graupel, hail, blowing dust, and freezing rain were also elements of this storm in different locations, which the National Weather Service in Des Moines, Iowa called an "epic" blizzard in its December 7, 2009 issuance of a Blizzard Warning for essentially its entire County Warning Area. Thunderstorms and lake-effect snow bands increased the totals in some places, including locations where the lake effect was able to be discerned more than 100 miles inland. Fog of the advection, frontal, and evaporation (steam) species—often occurring in combination—accompanied the snow in many localities, in some cases turning to freezing fog before lifting; some stations reported a very unusual simultaneous combination of heavy snow or mixed precipitation, lightning, dense fog, and winds in excess of 50 mph. The storm picked up forward speed as it entered South Central Canada, the clouds and precipitation appearing to travel in excess of 100 mph over central and north-east Canada and the North Atlantic Ocean. As in a case in December 1986 when the precipitation shield of a snow storm was confirmed to be traveling at 125 mph over Missouri, Kansas, and Iowa and with some species of synoptic scale dust storms and some cold fronts which also can attain forward speeds of up to 110 mph or more, the system hooked into an area of fast-moving upper-level winds and/or a strong jet stream. This setup allowed a great deal of convection not often seen at the ambient temperatures during this storm's cyclogenesis, reorganisation, and movement to the north-east to take place during most of the lifetime of the system. The storm was the largest wind producer for the region since Hurricane Ike reintensified and regained partial tropical characteristics over Indiana and Michigan. References